By William M. Dowd
Many years ago I worked for a newspaper in Binghamton. It was a time when that Southern Tier city was a great place to be. The center of a vibrant manufacturing community that included sprawling facilities run by IBM, General Electric, GAF and Endicott Johnson, and a community that enjoyed all the social and financial offshoots of such giants.
It also was a time when the arts and letters scene there was at its peak.
The Evening Press, the leading regional newspaper of the time, had a wonderful collection of excellent writers, incisive reporters and nurturing editors.
Sports, vibrant gallery showings, live theater and musical performances were available virtually every night of the week.
It also was a time when the creativity among local folks was finding a wider audience. The writer-producer Rod Serling’s “Twilight Zone” was being embraced by millions fascinated by the strange tales it contained. Johnny Hart’s “B.C.” comic strip was gaining momentum after a few years on the market, and he and creative partner Brant Parker had created “Wizard of Id.”
Many of us at the newspaper who harbored ambitions of eventually having a broader audience for our work were both proud of Johnny and jealous of his seemingly easy success after he had gone “big time” following a few years working in the General Electric art department.
Johnny went on to international fame with his cast of prehistoric characters — both animal and human — who engaged in philosophical debates, their own brand of baseball, and a lot of star gazing. Among countless honors, he was given the prestigious Reuben Award for “Cartoonist of the Year” from the National Cartoonist Society, and an award from the International Congress of Comics. In recent years his religious views popped up in some of his cartoons, usually causing consternation for one group or another.
Johnny died recently at the age of 76 in his home studio in Nineveh, a tiny hamlet near Binghamton.
The Binghamton scene I knew when he, too, was a young man died long ago. It suffered the same fate as many an upstate community — major manufacturing moved away, not enough jobs could be filled by other industries, Rod Serling died in 1975, the media big hitters of the era either died or retired, and the newspaper itself faded to a mere cookie-cutter publication owned by a mega-corporation.
All things do pass, and it’s easy to lament what has been lost. But, like his inspiration — the late Charles Schultz and his “Peanuts” comic — Johnny Hart did leave us with a treasure trove of comic art and commentary, something he was adding to when he died at his drawing board. For that we can be grateful, even if we feel a bit gloomy.
(Posted 06/18/07)
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